At the beginning of this year the Central Register of Temporary Restrictions of Rights of Entities Registered with the Serbian Business Registers Agency Act (RS Official Gazette No 12/2015) (hereinafter: “Act”) entered into force and on 1 June 2016 it became applicable so the Central Register of Temporary Restrictions of Rights of Entities registered with the Serbian Business Registers Agency (hereinafter: “The Central Register”) commenced with its function.
This register established within the Serbian Business Registers Agency (hereinafter: “SBRA”), represents an electronic database which contains information on legal entities, their owners, directors, other representatives, members of supervisory boards and members of other bodies that have had criminal, civil or administrative sanctions imposed against them.
Following restrictions are registered with the Central Register:
1) injunctions, restrictions or precautionary measures with respect to carrying on registered business activities or operations;
2) injunctions prohibiting the disposal of monetary funds;
3) injunctions restricting responsible executives in legal entities or sole traders from practicing their professions and performing their duties;
4) injunctions or restrictions with respect to the disposal of shares in legal entities ;
5) measures imposed by tax authorities;
6) measures imposed by inspection authorities;
7) measures revoking authorizations, licenses, permits, approvals, concessions, subsidies, incentives or other entitlements determined by special regulations;
8) other measures in accordance with the Act.
Data on the restrictions imposed to legal entities are available on the SBRA’s website, while restrictions imposed on responsible individuals are not publicly available and may only be obtained in line with regulations governing criminal records.
Public authorities and other bodies that are holders of public powers have the access to data contained in the Central Register through the JPI- application software system for recording data and its exchange with taxpayers, users, status registers and registers managed by the SBRA while only the person registered with the Central Register on any grounds may request the issuance of an excerpt or certificate.
Registration of data in the Central Register is done ex officio by a competent authority authorized to register data. The registration of data in the Central Register data must be performed within 3 days from the day of occurrence of grounds for temporary restrictions and exceptionally, within 5 days.
The aim of establishing the Central Register was to increase the level of security of business transactions for all participants, to improve transparency of doing business in Serbia, to prevent business entities and their representatives to act contrary to the imposed limitations and to enable better coordination and more timely exchange of information between state authorities.
By Milan Samardzic, Partner, and Vanja Vujnovic, Associate, SOG / Samardzic, Oreski & Grbovic
